


Making Way

by sigmaleph



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dimension Travel, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:28:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigmaleph/pseuds/sigmaleph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The macroverse is infinite and confusing and only barely manages to keep consistent rules across worlds. Jacob and Joanna explore a tiny portion of it while they decide what to do with godlike power.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Say Hello

**Author's Note:**

> This is unashamedly shit. I write it as it comes to me with almost no planning, overarching plot, or message, because the alternative is not writing at all and I got bored of that. There is some background story that will be revealed over time, as well as the mechanics of the world, but there's no end game here.

**Joanna**

The gunman was wavering between pointing at me and at Jacob, the wish for a second weapon expressed clearly in his face.

"Now, I know what you're thinking," I said. "On the one hand, I did insult you, your family, your friends, your pets and your girlfriend. Plus whichever category the dog falls under. On the other, my bro is probably going to kill you if you don't shoot him first. Look at him, all muscley and stuff. You're thinking, if you kill him, you can take me."

"But then," the aforementioned muscley bro noted, "maybe he can't. I mean, you are holding that little ball of light in your hand. Who knows what that does?"

"I know! Oh, but he won't believe me anyway, so that doesn't solve the problem. Quite a conundrum"

"Shut up, bitch!" he finally shouted. "I will kill you both if you don't shut _the fuck_ up and walk away. Right! Now!"

I pouted.

"But you still haven't made your choi-"

And the bullet went through my head.

At that point, Jacob lunged forward, slapped the gun off his hand, and probably broke his hand in the process.

"Sorry mate, wrong move" was his only comment while he held him down for approximately twenty-five seconds.

"I'm gone either way, asshole. I just wanted the bitch dead first."

"No such luck" I stepped into his limited field of view. "And doesn't Fluffy resent you using a term for 'female dog' so derogatively?"

He did the old wide-eyed "you-should-be-dead" face and noises and wild gesticulating at my corpse, currently lying on the floor and bleeding. Well, not the gesticulating, his arms were held down, but you could tell he wanted to. They always gesticulate so energetically given the chance, it's really fun to watch. (The staring at my breasts and/or crotch is less fun, one of these days I need to figure out how to reform my body with clothes on).

I reformed the ball of light I'd been holding before I was so rudely interrupted, and made it grow just a bit hotter than was necessary before putting it close to his face. The smell of singed hair filled the air.

"So, curious as to what this does? Time to find out!"

And I shoved it directly into his face.

* * *

 Jacob was doing his usual look of disgust at me having killed someone, while I removed my clothes from corpse-me and put them on.

"Was that strictly necessary?"

"He shot me in the face!"

He gave me another look. Always with his looks, my brother. This one meant "don't try to reframe this conversation into something we both know it's not about", or possibly "for all the good that did". He _wanted_ it to convey the former, but the latter bled through just a little bit.

"I mean," I continued "I didn't do anything to him! Minus the implied zoophilia and such, but what's the phrase? 'Sticks and stones', etcetera? Do you want the sort of person who shoots people over words walking around?"

"We were threatening him with arcane powers he has no understanding of. That usually makes people trigger-happy."

"Yes, OK, but he would have shot me anyway. Or had me beaten up, or broken a couple of bones, or... well, worse stuff. He burned a guy's house once for 'insulting his honour', whatever that means, I didn't dig deep enough. On numbers alone-"

"Yes, fine, he would have killed a dozen more people eventually, that's always your line."

"More like three, I expect, but yes. It's always my line because it's always the reason I do it!"

This time it was the "Always? _Really_?" look. That one he's practised thoroughly.

"Almost always", I amended. "But you know what I mean".

"And you know why I have to talk about this with you"

I hugged him.

"I do know. And I'm sorry I did it in front of you, and I'm sorry I didn't think of a non-violent way to stop him, and I'm sorry I didn't do it the way we agreed."

I explicitly left out "and I'm sorry I killed him", but he was kind enough not to remark on it. Him noticing is half the point, of course. I won't lie to my brother, not for my feelings and not for his and not to avoid a lecture, and this only works if he knows it.

"So, what do you want to do with the bodies?"

I prodded the one that had my (bullet-pierced) face with a foot. "Do you think I deserve a proper burial?"

"I was thinking pyre. We did earth last time"

"Sure, pyre works. Plus, we have all this wood lying around"

He took a glance around. The room was indeed full of wood, mostly assembled in the form of boxes. The boxes in turn contained a variety of material the government had deemed could not be sold freely, or so I assumed. I honestly hadn't bothered to familiarise myself with the local regulations on trade. But it was usually the case when unpleasant types stored stuff in boxes in hidden back-rooms.

"I think they are using it, though. Holding their merchandise and such"

"True, true. But surely one box won't be missed. We can even burn those magazines inside, so they don't have merchandise to box."

"Burning books? Doesn't sit well with me."

"That's porn, Jake. We're not impeding the discussion of revolutionary ideas. We're merely getting in the way of someone's wanking."

"Surely that's as noble a cause, sometimes?"

"Alright, fine, not arguing with you. Just the box then, and we leave the magazines."

* * *

 

You'd think one box is not enough to build a pyre for two corpses, but actually the wood was just symbolic. We built a little platform to hold my old flesh container and our late friend Dogfucker Johnson (I think his name was Roy or Ray or something), and we moved both bodies a few blocks to a less flammable area. A concrete dock with no nearby boats, specifically. (I'd like to claim we hid them magically or something, but neither of us had figured out how to keep a sustained cloak of warped light yet. We instead relied on the old trick of nobody being around the docks at two in the morning. I did check first, at least).

Once those preparations were complete, Jacob gathered all the aetheric essence he could from around us. Which was a lot more than I could have, really. That little ball of light earlier was the limit of what I could do quickly. Jacob, though, had one several meters in diameter hovering above us in no time, and he slowly lowered it over the wooden platform, burning the bodies to an unrecognisable blackened mess. It's what God would want, or so Jacob tells me. I made a small eulogy for my body, thanking it for several months of loyal service in housing me, while Jacob remained silent. Nobody said anything for R[o/a]y "Dogfucker" Johnson, which I think his soul might have appreciated.

"So, what now?" I asked. "My plans kind of ended at 'see who he shoots', in case it was you and we had to move"

"Food? I'm kind of hungry, and I did take his wallet. Some place has to be open around here."

I focused. Living, waking humans a couple of kilometres west. Couldn't tell what they were doing, but they would likely know where to find a late-night snack.

"Sure. It's a bit of a walk, that way. We can figure out something on the way"

* * *

"Well," Jacob said in between bites of a burger, "we kind of burned our identities here, with that stunt with the bikers, and your business with that guy is concluded, for better or worse. Move on?"

"I'd rather let it happen naturally. Plus I _just_ got this body, seems wasteful to only get a few hours of use out of it."

"Out of the country, at least?"

"Yeah, why not? I've been wondering about the People's Free Democratic Egalitarian Republic of Fassay, can't be as bad as they say."

"You said that about the place with the Goat Emperor."

"Goat Empress. Yeah, that was kind of... a thing of its own. But this one definitely does not have anything like that! No goats in the continent, for one."

"Well, that's a relief" He took a final bite of his burger. "So a tour of Fassay, then. What's the local religion, Maharabi?"

"I think so? The one with the guardian horses and purple-roofed temples."

"That's the one. The horses actually represent..."

And so I let him talk on about symbolic totemism and the local cultures symbolic associations with purple and heaven while we walked on, to find a place to sleep and plan the next stage of our trip.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that happened.
> 
> If you're wondering what the hell is going on, the answer is some of it will be revealed soon enough, some eventually, and the rest maybe never. I make no promises.


	2. Heroics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This does not continue chronologically from where we left off last chapter. Chapters with new titles indicate narrative breaks, which can be set at any point in time (and in any world). Chapters that are continuous with the last will be typically be called something like [chaptertitle] 2, 3, 4, etc. Or at least those are the rules I just made up, who even knows if I'll ever have multi-chapter plots.

**Jacob**

 

 "So, uh, where's your parachute?"

"I don't think I will be needing one," I replied. "Not this time."

"You're not jumping then? That's cool, lots of people prefer to watch first, but you should still-"

And then I jumped. I felt sorry for him, that could be a rather traumatic experience, but Joanna had assured me he would not be too hurt by it and in a couple of weeks it would just be an interesting story to tell. I had always wanted to experience a free-fall.

Though honestly, now that I was in the middle of one I didn't see what the big deal was. Yes, ok, you fall very fast indeed. And I suppose the view from on high was quite nice, but then every civilization that has planes to jump from also has aerial photography. I'm sure people will write their poetry about the howling of the wind and the feel of weightlessness and so on, but it simply did not hold that sort of appeal for me. I find more poetry in the still image of a sunset over the mountains, I suppose.

The ground was getting closer now, which was an admittedly a novel thing, and the visual effect was impressive in it's own way. Though to tell the truth-

My train of thought was interrupted by a brief burst of pain as I crashed on the ground. Then, freedom.

Unbound by flesh, my soul travelled outside the worlds, in the infinite dimensions of the Macroverse. It's a dizzying sight, if 'sight' is the right word for it; souls don't have eyes, after all. But whatever sense we do have was absorbing the worlds zooming right past as I tried to find a way to steer.

It's not a trick that I've learnt, yet. I know it's possible to guide oneself in the vacuum outside the worldstream, to choose ones next destination, but I can barely move a little bit this way and that, exerting choice only in the broadest of senses. Let could steer quite precisely with the aid of "beacons" that he set up, even travelling back to the same world if he wanted to. My sister can do something like that, but for her it's instinctive, and she only has one beacon.

I felt the pull of the worldstream dragging me back in, as my body reformed around me, and I popped back into existence.

I was inside a house of some sort, which told me a lot. It was a populated world, human by the looks of it, industrialised and fairly similar to my native one in broad strokes. Most worlds we end up in this part of the 'verse are like that, for some reason, but not all.

I took in a deep breath of the aether and tried to process it. Absorbing information from the aether is more Joanna's thing than mine, but I've still developed the skill and I can do the easy stuff. Language, for instance, is fairly easy to pick off the ambient information; everyone knows it, nobody tries to conceal it, and it sees regular use, so it leaves deep and easily readable imprints in the aether. This one shared more than a few similarities to a language in the eastern end of Asia in the last world, which was in the same family as a handful of others we learned over the last few visits, so it'd be easy to pick up. I left my brain doing that on autopilot while I handled a few necessary precautions.

There was nobody in the house, I quickly made sure, so that was one less problem. People don't tend to like it when naked men materialise right in front of them. Which was probably the next thing to take care of; I rummaged through a few drawers and closets until I found some clothes that the background cultural information I was absorbing said were masculine. They weren't quite in my size, but it would have to do. It seemed our host was a single male, so nothing specifically for Joanna, but she rarely cared enough about gender-based customs to object to cross-dressing.

Speaking of whom, she was just now materialising a few metres to my left.

"Heya, Jake! Did you have fun?"

"Eh, nothing special. Falling is just falling, after all"

"You have _zero_ sense of thrill, Jake. Only you can call a several-kilometre drop without a parachute 'just falling'"

"I'd think being mostly immortal would take some of the... _thrill_ out of an otherwise life-threatening situation"

"That's because you're boring"

"Or you are just easily amused"

"Same difference, really. So, what have we got here? A Thennayi-ish language, the same geometric decorative patterns, those trousers you are wearing... east-Makar-influenced culture then?"

"So it seems, though I haven't had much chance to check. There were some bookshelves in the room I popped up in, I'll look for an encyclopaedia"

"Sure, sure," she said absent-mindedly as she went through the pile of clothes I'd discarded. "No women live here, it seems... oh, but he has those skirt things that they wore at funerals, I liked those. I'll have to look for some decent underwear later"

"Yeah, I need to shop for something in my size too," I replied from the other room "See if you can find some cash, I'll leave them the usual-"

And then the wall exploded inward and a woman dressed in a white bodysuit and a cape flew right in front of me.

"What are you doing here?! Who are you?!"

"Hey, Jo!" I yelled to the other room. "I think we found the nexus!"

* * *

 

"Very funny. Now tell me what the hell you are doing in an evacuation area in what are clearly stolen clothes"

"You can _fly,_ " I indicated, pointing at her feet. "And apparently break walls with your body and not get a scratch. So why not interdimensional travel, I have to wonder?"

"My patience is running short, kid. If you had powers, I'd know."

I gave her what Jo calls my " _really?_ " look, and summoned a ball of light to my hand. A small one, and quickly dismissed, so she wouldn't feel threatened, but enough to make my point.

"We're from a _different dimension_ , we don't work by your rules," Joanna remarked. "Which makes me wonder, what exactly _are_ your rules? Why do you think we can't have powers?"

Flying Woman had the look of someone who expects to intimidate and command respect with her very presence and doesn't understand why it isn't working. We saw that a lot.

"Enough. _Whatever_ it is you are, you can't be here. I need to escort you out of the area and find a place to keep you until we figure out what to do with you."

"Sure, alright, whatever. Can we find some better clothes on the way? I don't mind the funeral getup, but I could really use a bra"

Flying Woman zoomed right up to Jo's face and glared down at her, through the eyeholes of the mask she was wearing.

"Do you think you're clever, honey? This is a _disaster situation._ You might be lucky enough that your powers, whatever they are, protect you from the poison in the air. Or you might not, and in a few hours we'll see you puking your innards out until you die, if we don't get out of here immediately."

 _Enough antagonising,_ I thought in Jo's general direction. I knew she was listening. _Her help might be useful later, and frankly the poison thing sounds unpleasant_. 

 _Fine_ , came the reply. _By the way, she doesn't believe the interdimensional thing but she thinks we have some power source she's never heard of. It's a contagion nexus world, they have people who are naturally born with highly-specific talents, like flight or telekinesis or super-strength, and don't expand into general aether manipulation skills. At least as far as she knows_.

We walked along, while my sister relayed all the relevant information she was extracting from our guide's brain. Her name was Onnea, but she called herself Arianna, which was some sort of mythological figure here. The nexus-empowered of this world did that, apparently, use fake names to keep private and public personas separate. It explained the mask. She was superhumanly strong and tough, could fly, and she worked as some sort of police/emergency responder against major threats (like other empowered people), for a large organization that was part of her country's government. Right now some sort of terrorist, possibly empowered, had threatened to release a toxic gas in this district, so they had evacuated rather than give in to his or her demands . She had some sort of gizmo that tracked people and could tell the difference between regular humans and empowered, which was how she had found us. She was taking us to a refuge ran by her organization, where she meant to hold us for questioning and find out who we 'really' were. Not that she intended to tell us that quite yet. She was actually playing friendly.

"Sorry I snapped at you earlier, this is a tense situation and I'm trying to protect the civilians..."

"Of course, don't worry about it," I replied. "Like I was trying to tell you before, my name is Jacob and this is my little sister Joanna."

"We're _twins_ , Jake. You can't call me your little sister based on ten minutes' difference."

"Chronology, maturity, height, pick whichever you like, you're clearly my little sister."

"Refusing to have fun doesn't make you mature, it just means you have a stick up your ass. Anyway, 'big brother'," she air-quoted, which just confused our guide, "and I are doing a little bit of dimensional tourism and happened right into your world. Not at the best time, it seems."

"You can say that again. We're having trouble with separatists in this area, and rather than solve the issue at the conference table they want to blow things up until the government gives in. Which they won't, the stubborn-" she 'caught herself'. Her acting was substandard, even without the telepathic voice in my head snickering at her ploy.

"But I don't mean to get you mixed into, uh, my world's politics. We'll just get you out of here and you can move on with your tour after a little bit of paperwork. Bureaucracy, you know."

"Oh sure," Jo smiled. "One of the great universal constants. Have you heard the one about death and taxes?"

"The what?"

* * *

"So if you wait right here, we'll get you something to eat and drink, and maybe some clothes in your size"

"Very kind of you," I replied. We were in a local refuge that had held a number of the evacuees not long ago. They had since been moved to a larger area in someplace or another, and the place was being used as a sort of control centre for the local empowered forces. Ostensibly we were guests, but it was obvious that the other mask-and-cape types were keeping a 'subtle' eye on us and would hold us back one way or another if we made a move. If their attire and deception skills were any indication, these were not the sort of people they used for covert missions.

 _Then again_ , came the message, _you wouldn't send your stealth ops to do searches and evacuations. These are the big brutes that can move big rocks and breath a lot of poison and live. They have telepaths and illusionists doing the important work elsewhere_.

Useful to know. Worst case scenario, of course, we could just kill these bodies and move on, but I was curious to see this world. Contagion nexus were rare enough, but this one was actually _public_ , which was unprecedented. We hadn't yet seen any post-scientific-revolution worlds where the fact that some people did impossible things was common knowledge, and I wanted to explore the consequences. One of which, apparently, was that you dressed in brightly-coloured bodysuits and capes.

"Well, here you are." 'Arianna' had returned with a tray of sandwiches and a couple of bottles of water. One of her team-mates, a tall and well-built man with purple skin, was following her with some clothes, thankfully none of which was a cape. "I've got some shirts and trousers that might be your size," he nodded at me "and some girl clothes for you" he directed at my sister.

"No thanks, I don't really like what passes for women's attire here. All those strings and knots and leggings. Did you know, skirts like what I'm wearing are considered exclusively feminine in my home culture? Well, no, of course you don't, how could you. Anyway, I'll take some underwear if you have it"

Purple Man was rather dizzied by Jo's fashion dissertation, but he finally handed over the requested garments and indicated a bathroom where we could change. A gesture surely meant to put us at ease, by letting us out of their sight, if a rather empty one. Still, comfort was comfort, and I was happy for it.

After we returned, they let us have a few minutes to eat before they started with their interrogation.

"I'm curious, Jacob. If you are from a different world with a completely different culture, how is it that you speak the language so well?"

"Oh, the last few worlds we were in were in this same general area. We learnt Matoin there" A lie, of course, as any language we knew was at best a distant cousin of theirs. But they probably would not be too happy to know we were sucking the information from their brains as they talked.

"Ah, yes, of course. And these worlds in the 'general area', did they also have superhumans?"

"Not like you're thinking, no." Joanna answered. "Most worlds have an individual nexus, a single person who can do things like travel through dimensions or manipulate energy" She demonstrated by calling her little ball of light, and shifting its hue from bright yellow to deep blue.

"What you have here is called a contagion nexus, one that spreads around power to multiple people according to specific rules. How does it work here, by the way? Are you born with them? Do you have to undergo some initiation?"

"They are genetic, as far as we know. People are born with them, though they usually awaken at adolescence. Is your world a contagion nexus as well? You told Arianna you were brother and sister, so you must come from the same world, but you both have powers"

"We are actually both individual nexus" I commented. "It's something of a special case"

"How fascinating. Do tell." I'm sure Purple Man thought he was being clever in the way he steered the conversation.

"Sorry, family history, quite complicated. Maybe another day. How about you? Do you also fly and smash buildings?"

We finally convinced Purple Man and his companions that divulging their own talent would entice us to talk about our own. A pointless exercise, really, Joanna already knew all of them, but she enjoyed the game. Someone really needed to give this team some better training in dealing with intel from enemy assets.

We did not mention telepathy, or that we were for most purposes immortal, but we did bring up regeneration, a few tricks with light, the limited shapeshifting were learning, enhancing strength by manipulating kinetic energy, and a handful more tricks like that. The frame their nexus gave them meant they had all very specific skills, and did not really understand the diversity of effects one can accomplish with a little bit of creativity and understanding of the aether.

_I wonder if I can pull a rabbit out of a hat, next. Oh, oh, oh! Can you materialise a coin so I can take it out of their ears?_

_Don't be mean, Jo, they are just learning about this._

_It's not mean if they don't hear me._ And somehow she managed to stick out her tongue at me telepathically. Like I said, creativity.

* * *

Bored of the show, we talked a little about our home world. Doubtless they intended to get a clue as to where we were 'really' from and what evil genius had engineered us  to unleash upon their poor unsuspecting populace, but they were just more confused than when we started.

"And the Catholics think their priests can change the wafer into the flesh of God, but of course no detectable physical change actually happens, so they have a fascinating bit of philosophy where the substance of it is separate from the accident. Yes, strange terminology, I know, it's difficult to translate. I don't suppose you have a philosopher here, might be you have some analogous concept? It actually inspired a few theories I developed about why the nexus so often-"

 _"_ There's literally nobody on the planet that cares about Catholic philosophy other than you, Jake. Anyway, we have abused your hospitality long enough, we should get on with our tour. Plus, you must have a lot of work, what with the terrorists or insurgents or whatever it is you called them"

"Oh, uh, would you mind hanging around for a bit longer? We really should process everyone that goes through the checkpoint, for record keeping, and um..."

"Do your records really need to show a couple of aliens that popped in and will surely pop out any time soon?"

"No, but, um..."

Another one of his team-mates, this time an older woman who we knew could create forcefields, interrupted him.

"There's the matter of your legal status. You are not citizens of this country, and so technically you are undocumented immigrants. I'm sure we could arrange a special dispensation to give you legal identities and save you a lot of trouble."

I was fairly certain Joanna was about to say "bored now" and blow up the room, but she was (un)fortunately pre-empted. Two cape-and-mask types walked through a hole eastern wall. One of them was glowing in curiously dark manner, while the other was wearing an oversized armour with a wrecking ball instead of a right hand. Presumably the one that had interrupted us

"Ha! Here you are, superfools, at the mercy of the Destroyer!"

"Dammit, what are they doing here?" Arianna asked. "Do you work for them? Was this a distraction?" She tried to shake the answers out of me, but it was curiously weak. She was supposed to be able to break humans in half, yet she was barely stirring me.

"New friends, Arianna? No matter, you can all go to Hades together. Now-"

"Excuse me," my sister interrupted. "What is that glow thing your friend is doing? It doesn't seem to be sitting well with our hosts."

"You don't know the Negator, girl? He has rendered your friends powerless, as useless as you. They are at the-"

"Yes, yes, the mercy of the Destroyer, I got that. I figure your power armour deal is so you can work with him and still destroy things? Clever."

"Enough of your insolence! Now prepare to die!"

He tried to grab Joanna with his left arm, which had a sort of claw, but only partially succeeded. 'Partially' in that she let her leg be ripped off and jumped away.

"Owww! I always forget to dial down the pain sensors with a new body, ow ow ow!"

"Don't be such a crybaby," I replied. "So, Destroyer, would you mind returning the leg? It's easier to reattach than to grow a new one, and she's gonna whine all the while if-"

Destroyer seemed to learn his lesson, and so did not monologue or otherwise announce his attack before lunging for me. I gathered a fair bit of essence and toughened my hands, then ripped open the claw.

"Yeah, I don't really like losing body parts. Sorry."

"But, what, how! Your powers should all be negated!"

"Well, they're not. Adapt to the circumstances."I should have said something wittier or appropriately dramatic, but it didn't come to mind. It felt like I wasn't really following the local convention on how these things went.

So instead I just took Destroyer's armour apart and threw him to the floor. He didn't really know what to do with himself, and our unpowered hosts were still strong enough to incapacitate him. I looked around for my sister, to return her leg, and found her floating after the Negator with two very bright balls of energy in her hands.

"No killing!"

"How about debilitating injuries?"

"One leg seems fair."

"Yay, sanctioned violence!", she cried as she shot him through the knee. He collapsed immediately, his glow slowly dimming. "Pfft, weak"

"We can't all have your nonchalant attitude towards loss of limb"

"I'm not nonchalant, didn't you just call me a crybaby? I just have enough self-respect to hop on one leg if necessary"

"True, true, I'm sorry. Speaking of which, catch."

I tossed her the leg and she carefully reattached it while our temporary allies checked their recovered powers and made calls to superior officers and such business. Purple Man approached us with an apologetic look on his face.

"I'm sorry for our attitude earlier. We were unfairly suspicious of you, and you have helped us catch two of the most notorious criminals in our list, and probably saved our lives as well"

I wanted to hit him over the head and explain that he should be even _more_ suspicious after a situation to which our powers were uniquely suited just popped up out of nowhere, but instead I just nodded and accepted his apologies. Joanna had an intense grin in her face as she tested her leg.

"So, and I know this is too much to ask, but talent like yours is needed. If you are willing to interrupt your tour for some time, we would appreciate it if you, um..."

And suddenly I understood what my sister was laughing about in my head.

 

 


	3. New Friends

**Joanna**

We were inside a small wooden cabin with a handful of locals, a family of four, keeping us company. The rain was falling heavily outside, and their firewood supply was running low.

_Should I?_ , Jacob was thinking _._

_I say about four in five chance they are gratefully overjoyed and one in five they call us demons and throw us out._

_Are you misrepresenting the odds because you want to see what happens when they try to throw us out?_

_No! I mean, I am curious, but I'm not lying._

_Fine._

So Jacob did his ball of light and heat trick, and to his relief and my disappointment the parents started to fall over themselves in praising him (the children were just staring). With just the tiniest touch of fear.

"Bless your divine reverence! We cannot express the happiness that fills our hearts to see your magnificence!" These were curiously eloquent peasants, come to think of it...

_Wait, that's a stock line. They are quoting some sort of... what do you call it? Liturgical play?_

_They have a liturgical play where a couple of strangers appear in a thunderstorm and light fire without fuel?_

_Not quite, no. Let me dig a bit..._

Jacob waited patiently, while our hosts kept their overworked prayer and, I think, began to betray confusion that they did not get a reaction from him. I started laughing mentally.

_What?_

_So apparently there's a standard play they see on holy days, and the running theme is a mysterious stranger which meets various groups of people and helps them with mystical power. And some people reject him and they die awful deaths, and others are indifferent or try to take advantage and they are suitably punished, and the truly faithful all recognise the Divine Ruler and thank him suitably and are rewarded. Or at least spared._

_So they think we are gods?_

_No. They think you are God, I'm too female to qualify. But that's not the best part._

_Which is..._

_I'm pretty sure God lives in a big city a few days further along this road, they saw him once during a pilgrimage._

_Oh._

_I don't think they'll object if you want to grace one of them with your divine staff. Well, they might be confused if you pick the man, but definitely won't dare object._

_No._ He was touchy on the subject, so I decided to drop it. I can totally be mature sometimes.

_Alright, sorry. They will expect a gift, silver will work. Drop a few words of wisdom, commend them on their faith, and leave._

Jacob summoned two discs of pure silver, gave one to each of the parents, and then on a whim created two smaller ones and gave them to the children. He gave them some line which I'm pretty sure was just a translation of a Beenre prayer he heard last world, and then walked out into the rain. I went after him and tried to form a water-deflecting shield out of aether to cover us out of aether. It mostly worked.

"So the local Nexus set up a religion around himself?"

"Yeah. And he, um, isn't terribly virtuous about it"

"I figured. How old?"

"A century? They weren't exactly historians. But that's the rough impression I get."

"A century-old Nexus." He was pensive, but blocking me out. Probably didn't want my running commentary on his train on thought.

"Do you want to go say hi?"

"I want _you_ to go say hi"

Even when I don't know what's on his mind, I like how my brother thinks.

* * *

"So how do you like your job? Guard to an immortal being that cannot possibly be hurt, that's not really the sort of thing that screams 'my life has a purpose'."

"Demon!" he screamed while trying to hack me into pieces.

"No, see, if I was a demon you'd be dead," I replied, dancing around his slashes. "Or, for that matter, if I didn't have a pain-in-the-ass for a brother who always gets super upset- Ow!"

He'd managed to give me a cut in an arm, which hurt like a motherfucker for the second or so it took me to numb it. I gathered a little bit of aether and sent a push in his direction, leaving him sprawled on the ground. I healed the cut while he tried to get up, then took his sword out of his hands.

"Well, this was fun. But I should really take this away before you annoy me too much. I do things I regret when annoyed."

He was screaming or something, didn't really pay much attention, because six more guards were rushing into the fight. Or were they just status symbols? Either way, they had swords, and were brandishing them in my direction. I sighed. Jacob was much better at this sort of thing, both the fighting and the not-killing. But the plan called for me.

Then again, I had a sword in my hand, too. Very similar to my opponents', too... time to try a new trick.

I cast a wide mental net and grabbed aether throughout the whole room, paying special attention to get directly from the swords. I started putting it together with the one in my own sword... but was interrupted by the first 'guard' reaching me and starting with hacking and slashing and stabbing. So I was forced to stop (rude!) and jump back a bit, take a look around, notice the awfully high ceilings... ah.

I floated myself upwards, out of the reach of anyone using melee weapons, and resumed my work. Aether from all swords in my sword, draw the similarities, emphasise the connection, and finally fling it upwards. Via the similarity link, the transmission of force to the rest was trivial, and soon every sword in the room was stuck to the ceiling. I smiled. I'd never pulled this off in the middle of combat before.

"Are you done? Or do I need to cut off your arms before you stop with the pointless gestures and go call on the god that supposedly lives here?" I would have made a pun on "disarming", but the wordplay didn't work in their language. Shame.

One of them fled, and the rest followed suit soon enough. I waited. And waited. And wait- oh hold on there he is. A giant black hole in the aether moving in my direction. Lovely.

And then, the ceiling collapsed.

Through a giant hole, a man in an impressively decorated robe flew into the room, six gigantic spheres of light orbiting. He was tall and blond and pretty well built, as you'd expect from someone so self-important to build a religion around himself given the ability to shape his own body,

"Demon! I am the Divine Ruler, and in my name demand that you leave this world at once!" His voice was appropriately booming, even if his dialogue was kind of corny.

"Not even a bit of small talk before?"

His response was to fling one of the spheres in my direction, which I figured meant 'no'. I thrust my hand forward, focused for a bit, and unbound the energy, dispersing it in a wave of hot air. His eyes had that 'how?!' look.

"See, I thought I was going to just be neighbourly and say hi, one Nexus to another, but you insist on making things awkward."

"Silence, demon. We are nothing alike!"

He threw all five of his balls at me, thinking to overwhelm me. He was right, in fact, and I could not disperse all of them in time, so I was burned alive.

* * *

I rematerialised next to Jacob, after a brief visit to the worldstream.

"So, I found the Nexus. He was not happy to see me."

"Field report?"

"Lots of raw power, very little subtlety. Low complexity workings, most advanced thing he has is basic self-shaping. Can't block a read, let alone make one of his own. A hundred and twenty-six years old, native to this world, not familiar with the greater macroverse. Actually believes he is a god."

"Even after meeting you? I suppose re-examining his worldview on new information is too much to ask?"

I snorted as my only reply.

"I expected as much. So what did he make of you?"

"He called me a demon while we were fighting, though from what I could see of the inside of his head I don't think he believed in such a thing before today" I replied. "Making theology up as he goes along, I suppose."

"Well, presumably there were religions pre-dating his which he drew inspiration from, and some of them had antagonistic supernatural creatures-"

"Not the time to nerd out, bro."

"Fine, fine. So what do we do, then? I have to say, I'm not a fan of his work here, but-"

"Ooh, are we playing cosmic police? I call bad cop."

" _But_ , "he emphasised, "our options are limited. I don't exactly want to stay around this world forever and make him behave, not to mention the logistic problem of making sure he doesn't kill me before I can figure out how to anchor here. And sending him off to another world just shifts the problem around."

"We could try to kill him. Properly, I mean"

He winced. "Is that really called for?"

“Look, I know you think I'm a bit to quick to kill people-”

“A _bit_?”

“A lot! Whatever! But if 'immortal superpowered despot who routinely tortures and rapes his subjects' doesn't call for it, what does?”

“You never mentioned torture before.”

“I'm extrapolating. Not the point.” I was only a little bit exasperated at this point. “He's not going to die _naturally_ , Jake. And I'm not sure how to even begin to calculate the odds he'll cross paths with another nexus any time soon because infinite universe and whatever, but they don't look good”

“I know he's not going to die naturally, that's rather the point. If we kill him, we are putting an end to a life that could've lasted for an eternity. Would you want any Nexus to be so casual about killing us?”

“ _He_ would kill us if he knew how”

“Then we should be better-”

“No. Don't you dare say it. We _are_ better than him, by virtue of the fact we do not go around declaring ourselves gods and demanding people obey us on pain of death”

He sighed. “Yes, you're right. I guess there's no escaping it, then. We're killing him.”


End file.
